1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a disk processing apparatus, and more particularly to control performed when a disk processing apparatus having a plurality of processing units is anomalous.
2. Related Art
A hitherto-known printer stores a plurality of disks in a feed stacker; continually subjects the disks to label printing; and discharges printed disks to a discharge stacker.
JP 2004-095064 A describes an optical disk processing system having a stacker case for storing a plurality of virgin optical disks in a stacked state and a recovery case for storing processed optical disks, wherein an optical disk is subjected to label printing.
There is no such a processing system equipped with a plurality of printing units. When large numbers of disk are printed, there is no alternative way but to connect a plurality of separate printers by means of a network, to thus perform parallel processing. When an error, such as ink depletion, arises in any of the printers in the middle of parallel processing, another normal printer cannot perform, in place of the error-generated printer, a print job which would have been processed by the error-generated printer. Consequently, a disk which would have been output from the error-generated printer is not output, which in turn results in a deficiency of disks.
Therefore, a system equipped with a plurality of printing units is desired. However, a mere aggregation of a plurality of related-art printers, each of which has only one printing unit, leads to substitute processing being performed while disks are supplied or discharged from stackers of normal printing units. Since the number of disks that can be held in each of the stackers is limited, even substitute processing may cause a deficiency, such as a deficiency of supplied disks, filling of the discharge stacker, and the like. Moreover, there is also a case where the type of a disk to be subjected to print processing changes from one printing unit to another, and hence there may be a problem of an inappropriate disk being printed.